1 Answer
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The problem is that they count as separate weapons from Unarmed Strikes, which means anything he does to improve Unarmed Strikes is not going to improve his Spiked Gauntlets. If he’s planning on Monk or anything similar, I strongly recommend that you ignore this fact entirely and houserule that they take on the damage of his Unarmed Strike if it is higher than the Spiked Gauntlets would be.

@mxyzplk Well, the description itself mentions only the damage type, saying that they otherwise act as an unarmed strike. The weapons table lists both the unarmed strike and gauntlet as dealing the same damage, so it seems a stretch to say that the "otherwise" does not refer to damage. The FAQ agrees with me here (p21), though it points out that gauntlets are not monk weapons.
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starwedMar 3 '13 at 17:32